


Abandon Hope

by Truth



Category: Aeon Flux (movie)
Genre: Incest, M/M, Violence, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006, recipient:dilly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-26
Updated: 2010-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-12 21:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/129382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oren Goodchild has a few unresolved issues when it comes to his elder brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abandon Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dilly](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=dilly).



> This work has been translated into Russian by Kollega and can be found here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1020181

  


## Abandon Hope

  
Fandom: [Aeon Flux (movie)](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Aeon%20Flux%20\(movie\))

  
Written for: dilly in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge

by [Truth](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=29/abandonhope)  


There's a certain closeness between siblings raised together. There's a pack mentality to it in some cases, an alpha that the others follow and sometimes war against. Often there's a distinct `us against them' dynamic that crops up when outsiders interact, no matter how fractious and contentious the relationship before or after the interloper has been dealt with.

Oren Goodchild barely knew his elder brother.

He would watch other children, other families, other relationships and think, savagely, `I want that. That should have been _mine_.'

He'd asked himself about it, once. Looking up into the older face that would one day stare back at him out of the mirror, he'd asked, "Why isn't Trevor really my brother?"

There had been a cautious silence as his older self looked down at him. "Trevor has important work to do."

Oren stared at the man whose DNA he bore and scowled. At thirteen he was old enough to spot the fundamental signs of a liar, and he wondered just how messed up you had to be to lie to _yourself_ about something so fundamental.

"Chairman Goodchild has _given_ him important work, you mean." Oren decided then and there that he didn't like the Chairman.

"He _is_ the Chairman." The older Oren looked down at the younger, this time letting bitterness openly twist his expression.

"No." Oren might have only been thirteen, but he'd been extensively educated. He knew what he was and, more importantly, what Trevor was. "You're making him _into_ the Chairman."

They stared at each other silently, a pair of identically formed clones from the same, now deceased, donor. Something about the harvesting and data-storage of the DNA strands caused a strange, echo-effect. They were more than genetically identical... they were the same man, caught at different stages of development - one being careful to shape the other so the truth _their_ truth, would never be lost.

"I'm not the one turning him into Chairman Goodchild," the older Oren finally told him, the words flat and angry. "This is something he's determined to do to himself."

"Because of her." Oren turned away from his older self, face set. He remembered listening to the Chairman explain _her_ to Trevor, and he'd been struck nearly dumb by the surge of painful and inexplicable hatred that had accompanied the sound of that name. She was nothing to him - a familiar stranger with a sweet, almost laughing smile.... She'd taken Trevor from him, each and every time, even though she'd been dead for seven generations.

"Katherine." The name was loaded with poison and weighed strangely heavy on his tongue. He didn't see the sudden, intent look that his older self turned on him, almost consumed by his desire to remember, to understand... and to destroy.

The Chairman had taken Trevor from him, but he did it because of _her_ , and Oren hated them both.

That hate sparkled along his nerves and through his veins, becoming something almost alive in its own right, and when he looked into his own eyes a second time, this time as the elder, he knew what he had to do.

**

Twenty seconds ago, it had been a near idyllic scene - the young scientist, poring over his latest studies at a small desk that fit neatly into a nook overlooking the gardens, a pen in one hand and a faint frown creasing his face. Oren had a way of disturbing things, however, sometimes simply by his mere existence.

Trevor stared at his brother, reaching for the heavy textbook that had just been whisked from beneath his fingers. "Oren... you're not supposed to be here."

"Why? Because I'd disturb your precious studies?" Oren was angry and didn't bother to hide it. "Why do you keep yourself tucked up in here, Trevor? You've generations of experimentation and knowledge at your fingertips. You need to study, you need to research, I'll not argue about that."

"Then why are you here?" Trevor frowned mildly Oren, one eyebrow climbing upward. Oren had been moody of late, but in every incarnation, seventeen seemed a difficult year for his younger brother. "Study is...."

"Study will not bring _her_ back." Intensity gleamed in the back of Oren's eyes as he leaned forward, hands flat on the desk that Trevor used for studying. "Every time I watch you drag yourself back into the past. Every life, I see you spend it reaching for something that disappeared from beneath your hands so long ago that it's past human _memory_."

The mildness in Trevor's expression had disappeared and his hands, which had been resting on the table, were curving into fists. "How dare...."

Oren's jaw clenched and his eyes glistened with furious tears. "I dare because I can't stand to watch you do this to yourself over and over and over. You bring her out and hold her up like some gruesome relic, preserved eternally out of your reach and _punish_ yourself for what happened. If you care so little for yourself, then I ask you, for _me_ \- stop looking to the dead for inspiration and look instead to the _living_."

Before Trevor could gather up an adequate response, Oren was gone. The heavy book, left teetering on the edge of the desk, lost the battle with gravity and slammed to the floor. The sudden, violent noise was no less startling than his younger brother's display of pained outrage.

Oren was often angry. It would have worried Trevor if that anger weren't so much a part of Oren's character. The energy of his anger drove him to heights of reckless achievement and had always been usefully tempered by his brother's calmer determination. This was not the first time they had disagreed, but it was the first time that Oren had actually lost his temper with Trevor... or had that Trevor could remember. Some things became fuzzy with the passage of time without constant renewal.

Trevor remained silently at his desk, looking after his vanished brother, for quite some time. Oren's words had hurt, on more than one level. Katherine was his icon, the memory of failure that drove him onward more surely than any goad. But Oren.... Oren was his _brother_ , the single rock in a stream of changing lifetimes and his faithful, constant companion.

He had heard the jealousy and the pain in Oren's voice, even masked by the anger, and it disturbed him. Either something was beginning to change between them or Oren had been carrying this with him with for some time and had kept it from Trevor deliberately. In either case, something would clearly need to be done.

**

The garden had always been Trevor's place, and not simply because that was where he grew various specimens for testing. Right now it was still the Chairman's place, and would remain so until he was too old to carry out his work. Or until there is a breakthrough.

Oren's lips twisted sourly. There would never be a breakthrough - not as long as he was in a position to prevent it. Trevor didn't know that and, if Oren had his way, would _never_ know. He'd waited, waited for so incredibly long. Lifetime after lifetime slid irrevocably past as he waited for Trevor to give up on a woman who had been dead since the _first_.

Katherine was gone. He'd made certain of that. Trevor clung to her _despite_ his every effort and it made Oren's own goals more and more distant with each passing lifetime. Trevor was getting close, possibly too close, and Oren wasn't willing to wait any longer. The right words, the right amount of genuine emotion and Trevor....

"Oren, wait."

Trevor would fall right into his lap.

Oren did not turn as his brother came up behind him, staring instead at a lovely display of sub-tropical orchids that he knew the Chairman bred for a new strain of info-pollen. "Trevor." His voice was perfectly level and he let his tone speak for him.

"I'm sorry, Oren."

Apologies always came so easily to Trevor, the eternally guilty. Oren did not shrug away the warm hand that settled on his shoulder, tugging gently, but nor did he turn to face his brother. "Sorry... I know you are. You're drowning yourself in sorrow. Does your work have to be penance?"

He could almost see her face among the orchids, the careless smile of someone who'd never dreamed of the fate waiting for her or of the hate that she would cause by her mere existence and her movement into Trevor's orbit.

"It isn't penance. It's hope." There was something raw in Trevor's voice, but Oren resisted the urge to turn, to see the emotion that _he_ had caused written across the familiar face. "It's hope for all of us."

"Hope that you spend on a vanished dream." Oren refused to use the word `love' or to speak her name. Trevor was emotional and vulnerable, but he wasn't stupid. There was no way that he would miss the raw hatred in Oren's voice. The bitterness could be passed over as genuine misery at his brother's voluntary martyrdom.

"It's not a vanished dream," and Trevor's voice was sharp for the first time. "Not so long as I...."

"She is _dead_." Oren did turn then, directly into his brother's arms, anger again obvious. He stared at Trevor from a distance of inches, hands coming up and closing into fists in the fabric of Trevor's jacket. "Dead, Trevor. Gone. Do you know how much it hurts to watch you mourn her, to hold her memory like your last, precious hope when I'm standing right here, alive, and knowing that I'll never mean even a fraction of that to you?"

Trevor's mouth worked for a moment, angry denial undercut by honest confusion. "Oren, I...."

"It's not enough." Oren's grip tightened for the briefest moment before he let his hands drop, turning away. "It's not enough to be your tool anymore. You've taken this from being _our_ dream, _our_ mission and turned it into a memorial as permanent as the Reliquary."

... and wasn't that an ironic choice of comparisons?

"Oren." It was Trevor's turn to grasp at his brother, but Oren batted his hands away.

"I don't mind being your servant." It was a lie, but the quaver of anger in his voice hid it well. "But can't you give me something back? Can't you at least acknowledge that you're _not_ alone?"

The open mouthed-denial was stopped again, this time by Oren's own mouth as he lunged forward, suddenly and furiously unwilling to hear another apology, another _lie_ about how Trevor actually cared about him. He might believe it, but Oren knew better.

Surprise held Trevor where he was and Oren took advantage of that surprise, slowly letting go and stepping away. "You're not alone." Oren's voice shook as he turned and walked away, knowing that Trevor wouldn't follow him.

No, Trevor wasn't alone. Oren knew that better than anyone. He also knew that Trevor would never stand by him. Not in this.

`She took you from me.' He left the garden, stalking toward his quarters, fighting an urge to simply scream his anger to the uncaring walls. She was _dead_ and still her touch lingered. Oren had seen to her destruction personally and the poison she'd used on Trevor still lingered.

`Seven lifetimes, and I can't break free from her shadow.' Something was breaking, deep inside. Instead of fighting it, Oren let it tear through him, feeling all the buried anger and hate and doubt in an almost cleansing rush. He'd known this - known it for several lifetimes now, but Trevor had been right in one thing, at least.

Hope was a difficult thing to give up, even as it soured and rotted from within - poisoning that which it had once illuminated so brilliantly.

It was Trevor who carried the poison. Trevor who cast the shadow... and Oren was going to step into the sunlight. `You chose her....' The taste of defeat as bitter as the kiss he'd taken. `She can have you.'

Trevor would never change. No matter how desperately Oren wanted it, Trevor would always be standing there, reaching toward his dead love, seeing nothing but _her_.

When the time was right, Trevor would die... and Oren would finally be free.

   
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